Piece By Piece

Today, I started the morning off listening to a video posted on CNN.  It was of Kelly Clarkson singing a song that resonates with me deeply "Piece By Piece." It is an emotional song about a woman who was unwanted by her biological father, and the coming-to-terms with the fact that he actively did not choose her as a child, and that with her own daughter, she promises more.

By the end of the song, everyone was crying in the video, and I was crying at my desk.  It is very, very evocative.



It resonates.  Here is why.

Beside the farmhouse in which we lived, I was picking up pecans that had fallen from the tree.  It was a very large tree, so there were always pecans, and I love pecans.  I stood straight up when I heard them screaming at each other, then his car door slam.  I watched the dust that was airborne.  It was reddish brown.  I stood wordlessly and stared at my mother.  Her back was to me.  Her hands were at right angles to her body, fingers splayed wide. She turned around.   "FUCK!" she was now staring at me, and walking toward me.

 I was scared and ready to duck out of the way "why did Keven leave?"

"WHY DO YOU CALL HIM THAT!?  He is like a father to you, WHY CANT YOU CALL HIM DAD??"

Not even a second to think about it, "He is not my father."

"NEITHER IS JIM SCOTT"

There.  It was done.  I was 10 years old, and the news left me speechless.  I had not lived with him really, since I was 5, but he was the only father I had known.

She stormed past me, and I knew that this was not something I could ask her about later. So I carried it with me for months.

I looked more closely at the two brothers I thought shared parents with me.  None of us really looked like each other.  Jason looked just like "dad," David looked just like my uncle Wes, but me... no one.

I got brave one day when I was talking to my aunt. "Who is my father?"  She did not know, she just knew that he got very angry when my mom told him she was pregnant and he made it clear that he did not want that child.  He lived in Kansas City.

When I was 14 and living with my grandparents, I mentioned that I wanted to find my father.  My grandparents were angry, told me he was a drug addict and he did not want me.  I knew I could never ask them about him again,  so I asked my aunt again.

A few weeks later she said "Larry Wilson, That is all I know."

I told my closest friend, my adult neighbor, Kathy.  She was smart and worked with me.  I will never forget the day it happened.

We were going through the phone listings for Wilson in Kansas City, Kansas and Kansas City, Missouri.

After several called "Is Larry there?" "Larry, I am calling from Virginia for my kids' babysitter.  She is trying to find her father.  Did you know Dianne Hart?"  She handed me the phone.
I did not know what to say, but I gave him my neighbor's address, and he wrote to me. He had the most beautiful handwriting.  Inside the letter, he put a picture.  Same hair color, eyes, chin...
I showed it to my brother.  "yep."

I called him a few times, and wrote several more.  When it was found out, I got grounded, but I kept writing.  I told him about my academic gifts, that I sang, and that I wanted to be a doctor.  He told me that had been his plan as well, but that Vietnam ruined it all for him.

He was addicted to heroine.  This was very apparent when we spoke on the phone.  He sounded a lot like Bob Dylan to me.  He asked me to sing for him once, so I did.  He said when he died, he wanted me to sing at his funeral.  Would I please sing "Desperado?"

When I was 18, I drove to Kansas City from Virginia. 5616 east 26th.  I had memorized his address.

" I drove 1500 miles to see you." 


 His mother answered the door.  She hugged me.  She was very tiny and in tears.

When I saw him, I could not stop crying.  There were so many sadnesses.  He had not wanted me as a baby, a child, an awkward middle schooler.  He did not try to find me, but he knew I was out there.
"but you didn't want me"  

But now he did want me.  He kept saying "you are beautiful. you are beautiful. you are beautiful."

That chant became
"you are a singer. you are a singer. you are a singer"

"you are a scientist. you are a scientist. you are a scientist." over the next 4 years.



I made something of myself and now you wanna come back
But your love, it isn’t free, it has to be earned
Back then I didn’t have anything you needed so I was worthless

I always felt uncomfortable talking to him.  The drug-induced drawl scared me and I felt like I had to speak as if I was talking to a toddler so he could understand me, but I called and wrote him.

In May 1999, I called to get his zip code in order to send out my college graduation announcement.  It was Mother's Day.  I had just finished watching "At First Sight" with Val Kilmer.  I was already tender.

"He is very sick.  He is in the hospital."

I called the hospital.  He was in a coma, but the lady there, put the phone up to him as I told him I loved him.  "He might die"

I went downstairs and sat on the sofa.  I cried and cried.  My husband asked what was wrong.  It was an hour before I could tell him.  I grieved the loss of a man I had so dearly needed in my life.  I knew that he was going to die.

The next day, I called the hospital again. "We do not have the name in our system."

He had died.

The second time I saw my father, he was in a casket, and my little 2 year old asked over and over, as people looked at me for my reaction, "That you daddy?" I shook my head no.

I have never known daddy.

Perhaps that explains a lot about me, but I am learning, and I am healing and piece by piece,

he restored my faith
That a man can be kind and the Father should be great